The Hermitage? Are you kidding?The Winter Palace was overwhelming,but the modest MusEros on Ligovskiy Av.was the high point.

Sure, we saw the Kolyvan Vasein the west wing of the Old Hermitage,largest vase in the world,like a birdbath for pterodactyls,after we’d already passed throughthe Hall of Twenty Columns,its amazing mosaic floor,hundreds of thousands of cubed-tile tesserae;over three million pieces of art altogether,largest collection of paintings in the world,founded by Catherine the Great in 1764, yes,but the MusEros has Rasputin’s footlong dongpreserved in a glass jar,severed from the mystic when he was murdereda hundred years ago, in 1916.They say just seeing itcan cure a man of impotence.

Did it work?Maybe it was the exotic unfamiliar surroundings,St. Petersburg so different from Davenport,or maybe the aphrodisiac qualities of the vodka,but when we got back to our room at the Pushka Inn,I hadn’t felt such ardor for Alexandrasince the steamy backseat of my parents’ carafter football games on crisp Iowa evenings –my wife’s name the same as the Romanov tsarinarumored to be Rasputin’s lover.

Previously published in Bindweed, July 2017

The Last Good Country

At the bookstore across the road from Horton Bay,the proprietor seemed anxious to sellHemingway memorabilia to us –Nick Adams ballcaps at twenty-five bucks a pop,T-shirts, postcards, aprons, books.Although a designated historic sitethere wasn’t a lot of traffic herein Boyne City, on Charlevoix Road –a little off the beaten path from Petoskey.She seemed a little desperate.

Even for diehard Hemingway buffs,how could you compete with Cuba, Key West,Paris and Pamplona?Besides, Hem never returned to northern Michigan after 1922,even if he set so many stories here.

“No thanks, I already own a copy,”I politely waved her awaywhen she offered to sell mea copy of The Torrents of Spring,but I did buy a handful of postcardsand a bookmark for a friend,a laminated Calvin and Hobbes cartoon stripabout the right way, the wrong way, the Hemingway:three and half dollars.

Getting back into our car,I took a last look out into the bay,fixing it in memory like a postcard.

Previously published in Chiron Review, 2017

At Last I Can Start Suffering

“At last I can start suffering,” I joked,channeling Cosmo Brown in Singin’ in the Rain, when he thinks he’s lost his job,“and write that symphony.”

My daughter had just broken the news:our granddaughter, whom we’d been babysittingfor the last nine months,was going to start attending daycareso she could learn to be with other children.

I hadn’t really noticed until then,but I’d become quite attached to herbaby’s sunny wonderment, her delight,reaching her arms out to be lifted,falling asleep on my lap, like a cat.

Not since my daughters left home for college,more than a decade ago,had I had such a sense of wistful loss,not even when my mother and twin brother died.

But I’d adjusted, hadn’t I?This, too, would become “normal.”My writing had taken a hit, it’s true,not that I particularly minded,but now at least I can write that symphony.

Previously published in Red River Review – May, 2017

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives and Reviews Editor for Adirondack Review. His most recent books include American Zeitgeist(Apprentice House) and a chapbook, Jack Tar’s Lady Parts ( Main Street Rag Press). Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.

Comments are closed.

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.